


Casual

by lunarlychallenged



Category: Mean Girls - Richmond/Benjamin/Fey
Genre: pizza delivery au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-16
Updated: 2018-09-16
Packaged: 2019-07-12 21:58:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16004132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunarlychallenged/pseuds/lunarlychallenged
Summary: It was strange to run into people you graduated with.  It was stranger when one of them became your regular pizza delivery guy.





	Casual

One of the strange things about staying home for college instead of leaving was seeing everybody else come and go during breaks. For months, you could go to the store without seeing anybody you graduated with, and then you would suddenly see three or four people you’d never wanted to see again. You’d have to ask those obligatory questions, you’d forget the answers immediately, and you’d have to do it over and over again.

It was the worst.

Summer began, your old classmates came home, and Chicago felt far too crowded. The best solution to the overcrowding was, for now, staying home. Thank God for takeout. 

You had grown used to getting the same two or three pizza delivery guys, all of whom were in high school. They were about as disinterested in you as you were in them, so the exchange was quick and painless. Today, you opened the door, and it was not a kid on the other side.

“Aaron Samuels,” you said, voice going up an octave in your surprise. You cringed. “Hey!”

He smiled, and your throat felt a little tighter. You hadn’t been ready to see anybody today, least of all somebody who actually mattered. “Y/N! It’s been a while.”

“For sure,” you said. You had seen him around a few times since graduation - at the store, movies, graduation parties. Normal places. Never on your doorstep, in a work uniform. “So, you’re a pizza guy now?”

“College was too much,” he sighed. “I thought this was a better career plan.”

“Totally,” you said, working to keep a straight face. “Work through the ranks. Save your tips. Buy the city.”

“Pizza is the future,” he said, and handed you a receipt to sign. “No - this is my summer job. I wanted to make a dent in the decades of college debt ahead of me.”

Aaron was at some out of state school, though you couldn’t remember which one. It hadn’t really mattered back then, when he was a popular guy with a popular girlfriend.

The problem with guys like Aaron was that he deserved his popularity. He was worth knowing, worth liking, and thinking too much about him made you want to think about him more. It had been easier to avoid thinking about him at all. Now he was on your doorstep, and he had a pizza, and there was nothing else to think about. You suspected that thinking about him now would be just as dangerous.

“Try to marry somebody rich,” you advised. “No need for pizza deliveries when you have somebody to pay for your every whim.”

“I haven’t met anybody that rich,” he said. “But I’ll keep an eye out.”

The pizza he gave you was still warm, and the smell hit you like a ton of bricks. 

“Have a nice day,” you said. When he left, you wondered if you had said that many words to him in all of the years you were in school together. You wondered whose fault that was.

 

 

Aaron was a good pizza guy.

You started ordering a lot of pizzas.

It had nothing to do with Aaron being a good pizza guy.

Probably.

 

 

“I’m going to ask a question that I should probably already know the answer to,” you told Aaron.

“Shoot.”

You schooled your face into the most casual, businesslike face you could manage. You immediately started wondering if that was the wrong face - you wouldn’t be asking if you didn’t care about the answer. “Are you still dating Cady Heron?”

“No,” he said, and his face was as blank as yours. “No, we broke up a little after she started college.”

“Are you guys on good terms?”

He shrugged. “We aren’t really on any terms.”

You had liked Cady. She seemed nice, most of the time. She seemed like the type of girl that Aaron would be good with.

“Is that a good thing?” He didn’t seem totally broken; he was always genuinely cheerful when you saw him. The way he looked now - carefully empty, like he was making sure not to react - did not seem as casual.

“She felt like we were heading in different directions. I disagreed. It didn’t matter; relationships have to be mutual, but breakups don’t.” Aaron picked at the corner of your receipt compulsively. “It’s been a while. I’m fine. I’m sure that she’s fine.”

“That’s good,” you said cautiously. “Fine is good.”

“It’ll do,” he said.

“And you haven’t seen anybody since then?” You were pushing things now, surely. No casual face would mask the fact that you were asking if he was single.

“Nope.” Aaron blinked at the receipt and smiled apologetically. It was mangled in one corner. “No, I’m not seeing anybody. Are you?”

“No,” you said, and the nod he gave you was a little less than casual.

 

 

“If you find somebody rich to marry, you should pay for my pizzas.”

He snorted. “Why?”

“Because,” you said grandly, “I’m tipping you really well.”

He hummed. “So I should pay you back for paying me to do my job?”

“I’ll be your best friend,” you offered. You felt like a six year old. From what you remembered of six year old Aaron, he got in trouble for drawing turtles, no matter what he was supposed to be drawing.

That did not make six year old you want to be friends with him. That definitely made current you want to be friends with him.

“That seems like an unequal friendship,” he said. “If you want to talk to me, I have to bring you a pizza. If I want to talk to you, I have to wait for you to order a pizza. I’m not sure that it’s worth it.”

“Fine,” you said. “I’ll add you on Snapchat. You’ll still have to bring me pizzas.”

“I don’t have Snapchat,” he said. As it turned out, Aaron didn’t really do social media. You could see why - Northshore hadn’t had a great media environment.

“I guess I’ll have to buy my own pizzas,” you sighed. 

“I do have a phone,” he said. Your eyebrows went up - the words had come out in a rush of air, like he had been as surprised to be saying them as you were to hear them.

“That’s good,” you said, not sure how he wanted you to respond. “It’s hard to get a job when you don’t.”

“No - I mean, I don’t have social media, but I do have a phone. If you wanted to be able to contact me.” Aaron didn’t meet your eyes while he spoke, but the was a whisper of a smile that gave you a warm, jittery feeling while you wrote your number on a scrap of paper.

“So, now you can buy my pizzas.”

“No.”

 

 

“How long is your shift today?”

“Eight hours,” Aaron sighed, and the look he gave your pizza box was hysterical in its longing.

“I’ll bet you’re wishing for that sugar-momma now, huh?” You opened the box and gave a dramatic inhale. “Oh, that smells amazing.”

“Don’t be cruel,” he warned. “I deliver your pizzas. Someday I’ll spit on it, and you’ll have no idea.”

“Now that you’ve told me, I will.”

“You won’t know when. It could be next time. It could be a year from now. You’ll be terrified until I do.”

You shrugged. “Fine. I’ll use the request section to ask for literally any other pizza guy.”

You both knew it was a bluff, but he didn’t call you on it.

“I’ll recruit them,” he said.

“What, you’ll woo them into submission?” Realistically, he could. Aaron Samuels got more attractive by the day - or maybe you were just more attracted to him every day. It was a thin line to walk, but you fancied yourself a decent acrobat.

“If that’s what it takes,” he said, and his smile had enough of a edge to it to make your chest flutter. “Don’t play a player.”

You gave a snort of laughter. “Aaron Samuels, a player. Sure.”

“You’ll never see me coming,” he said.

The next time you ordered a pizza, you requested that he deliver it.

 

 

Y/N: Aaron

Y/N: are you working?

Y/N: i heard a funny joke, and i’ll tell you if you deliver my pizza

Y/N: if youre working, dont reply for 3 minutes

Y/N: im ordering a pizza

Aaron: I wasn’t working. I was sleeping.

Y/N: yeah. i know that now

Aaron: What was the joke?

Y/N: you lost your joke privileges

 

 

Aaron grinned, lopsided and wonderful. “I can see the perks of the guy that controls dairy, from season one.”

“You’d be the perfect pizza guy,” you said, and he laughed.

“What about you? What Misfits power do you want?”

“I’d be okay with the time travel,” you said. That had always seemed like a no brainer to you - time travel was a prime power. 

Aaron took his hat off and ran his hand through his hair. It was a hot day, and his hair was sticking up in wet clumps. “You seem to have things pretty together. Is there really something that you regret enough to go back in time for?”

You twirled the receipt pen around your fingers. “I should have listened to My Chemical Romance before they broke up.”

“That would have made all the difference.”

“Mikey Way would have fallen in love with me, I’ll bet,” you said.

“And all of your college debt would be taken care of,” Aaron said, and the way he smiled made you drop the pen.

“What about you? Any big regrets?” You picked up the pen and handed it back, making your voice light and airy so you could ask a hard, heavy question. “I’ll bet it’s Cady, right? Maybe you’d go back and fix things with Cady - live happily ever after with your beautiful wife and decades of debt?

He shook his head, thoughtful. “No, I don’t think I would change that.”

“No?”

“I regret the way things ended, maybe,” he said. He handed off the pizza box, and you were so focused on his words that you almost didn’t take it. “I don’t regret the fact that things ended.”

You picked at the hem of your shirt, not wanting to look too happy or too interested. It would be so easy, when he was looking at you with that smile and those eyes, to believe that the only reason he was single was that he wasn’t with you.

“Maybe it would be different, though, if you went back,” you offered. “You could go back and be with the Cady that loves you.”

“No. The Cady who loves me isn’t the person I want to be with anymore,” Aaron said, and proceeded to say something about needing to go back to work. More pizzas to deliver, and all that. You didn’t have the chance to ask him what he meant.

 

 

It made you feel a little queasy to ask Aaron if he was excited to go back to school, and he looked a little uncomfortable while he answered.

“Yes and no. I like school, but I really like not-school.”

You nodded. “When do you go back?”

“In a couple of weeks.” He held the pizza box steady so you could sign the receipt on it. “I have less than two weeks before I stop working.”

“And I’ll have to break in a new pizza guy,” you sighed. “What a shame. You’ve been doing such a good job.”

“Tragic.”

Your feet shifted a little. “And, you know, I’ll miss seeing you.”

Aaron’s face softened, and a few strands of hair fell in his eyes. “I’ll miss seeing you, too.”

“If things were different -” You paused, brow furrowing.

“What?”

“If you were staying, I think I would ask you out,” you said. There was no point lying, not when he was about to leave. If he didn’t like that, you would just start ordering more Chinese. “We’d hang out all the time, and we’d be able to see each other every few days. It would be really nice, and I think we could make it work.”

“Yeah,” he breathed. “If I was staying.”

You took the pizza, stuck somewhere between happy that he hadn’t laughed and sad that he seemed as wistful as you were. For the rest of your life, he was going to be your ‘almost.’

“Y/N?”

You paused, only able to see a sliver of him through the crack between the door and the frame. “Yeah?”

He was almost smiling, but it wasn’t quite happy. “If that was a roundabout way of telling me that you like me - likewise.”

 

 

You had not ordered a pizza, but Aaron was standing on your doorstep with one.

“I think that you’re doing your job wrong,” you said, raising one brow at him. “You only give food to the people who paid for it.”

“I paid,” he said. “Do you want it, or not?”

“I want it.”

Aaron gave a pointed look to the room behind you. “Are you going to invite me in?”

You crossed your arms. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

“I haven’t found a rich woman to marry me,” he said. “So I thought, hey, maybe I should start looking for somebody who I might like for reasons other than money.”

You bit back a grin. “How’s the search going?”

“That depends,” he said. “Are you going to invite me in?”

You took the pizza, making sure to let your fingertips touch his hands as you did. He smiled, running his hands through his hair.

“This is only because of the pizza,” you lied. “Anything for a pizza - even if I have to deal with a boy that’s leaving.”

“What if I promise to buy lots of pizzas? I guess I’d have to visit sometimes, but it’s a cross I’m willing to bear.”

“I guess I’ll have to let you in lots of times.”

In the end, you would let him in empty handed.


End file.
